funeral of a man that had died suddenly
and I remember walking into the church
that it was at and you walk in and there
are pues and everybody’s sitting in
there and there’s a certain level of
order you know what I’m talking about
we’ve all experienced a funeral I’m sure
and there’s a certain level of order in
the way that things are done the family
sits at the front and people would get
up and would speak and do their thing
and afterwards I remember talking to
this man’s Widow and I remember her
saying to me I’m so sorry I just I can’t
I can’t keep it together it’s it’s been
a really rough day for me and I remember
thinking wait at what point did this
become something that you should be
sorry for like at what point did you
feel obligated to apologize for this and
the thing is as I’ve actually
experienced this more than once this is
a common thing i’m sure you have
experienced this also what it makes me
wonder is when did we as a society
forget how to move through grief i have
another friend whose sister lives in sri
lanka and they’re from sri lankan her
sister still lives there and she is what
I like to call a competitive crier and
what happens is when someone dies they
go and they hire this individual to come
and be a part of the funeral procession
ille and this person will come and they
cry with the family and with everybody
else because the more Criers that you
have at your funeral the better your
funeral is which I don’t know why this
matters to the person that’s already
but as you can tell it’s competitive so
what happens is everybody gets together
and they cry and she’s a very good crier
so incidentally she gets hired a lot and
uh this type of thing actually happens
in a lot of other places in the world
doesn’t really happen in North America
but I’m sure that we’ve all turned on
the TV and seeing someone in some other
country that dies and we will see
sometimes they’ll take the body and
they’ll just carry it through the
streets right it’ll take a body and
they’ll be carrying this body of this
person that’s a great leader or that’s
whatever whoever it may be and they’ll
be carrying this person to the streets
people will be throwing themselves in
the body and I’m sure that you like me
all of us have at some point seeing this
and thought that’s a little bit crazy
pull yourself together have a little bit
of class right but I would actually
argue that this is a much more natural
the thing is is that many times what we
do is we medicate instead of mitigate
and when you say the word medicate
probably one of the first things that
comes to mind is medicine are you with
me alright you think medicine you think
well there’s a pill for this my arm
hurts okay we have a pill for that um
the thing is is many times when we
experience grief or we experience
suffering or we experience something
that is uncomfortable we simply turn to
medicating instead of mitigating there’s
always a pill there’s always a drink
there’s always some type of food there’s
always a person there’s always some form
of entertainment there’s always some
type of religious service you can go to
you know what I’m talking about right
it’s easy to just gloss over it instead
of mitigating whereas mitigating is when
you actually hold this thing that has
happened in your hand and you say what
do I do with it how do I move through it
and you move through it and you
hopefully have a community of people
they can move through it with you and
you actually assess the damage and you
move through it
as opposed to what we’ll just gloss over
we’re just going to try and move
throughout we’re just gonna try and keep
ourselves together like this woman at
this funeral I’m so sorry i can’t keep
it together i have a friend that says
sometimes she says sometimes I wonder if
we suffer from too much of a good thing
and it makes me think about this thing
that Viktor Frankl said the great Viktor
Frankl and one of the things that he
says is that between stimulus and
response there is this space and in that
space is our power to choose our
response and in our response lies our
growth and our freedom anybody here want
to experience a little bit of freedom
anybody here one I experience a little
bit growth when you’re going through
something incredibly painful anybody
here one I experience having someone
that just says yeah that’s terrible when
you’re going through something
incredibly terrible this creating of
space that every single one of us I
believe is called to and can do and has
the opportunity to do I think is best
exemplified by a story that I heard
about the Iroquois nation and there’s
this book written by Sebastian Junger
and he talks about it it’s actually by
the same name of my talk which is tribe
and it’s this story and the what would
happen is the Roy nation all the
different tribes that were part of this
nation when they would have warriors
that they would send off to war they
would gather together and they would do
this whole ceremony and they would go
through and do this whole thing before
they sent off their warriors and here’s
the thing is it wasn’t just the warriors
and it wasn’t just the Warriors families
but every single person in the tribe
that would participate in this and then
when they would come back the end those
well those that would come back would
participate in this same thing again
this exact same ceremony and they did
this because they had this
fundamental understanding that
everything that had happened everything
that they had experienced also affected
the rest of the tribe that everything
that had affected the tribe had also
affected them that there was this unity
that this whole thing that had happened
had affected them together as a tribe
and so they would go through it and
what’s so crazy is that there are
actually papers that have been written
on this and studies that have been done
these tribes actually experienced far
less cases of PTSD in some cases none
from battle and mental health issues
were quite low and people had better
community the inverse of this is uh it’s
a story about a friend of mine i like to
call nasty neighbors because i think we
all have that neighbor that talks too
much you know i’m talking about that
person that you’re outside your
gardening you want it to be quiet and
this person always somehow seems to be
outside when you come outside and wants
to talk to you about my goodness who
knows what and you just want to work on
the petunias two of you here that
actually work on their garden so this
friend of mine he’s telling me one day
he says yeah my neighbor ah was talking
me the other day and he said he tells me
his neighbor came up to him and said I I
just found out that my wife has been
cheating on me she’s been having an
affair and I don’t know what to do and
he kind of has this like brush it off
like yeah okay right
and when he was telling me this story he
tells me he says he says I thought why
the hell are you sharing your crap with
me I got out of my own crap and here’s
the thing i totally get discretion I
totally get timing right there’s a
timing for these things and there’s also
a time there’s a place to write and
here’s the thing i would say that this
what this neighbor did was a bid this
was him saying i don’t know how to move
through this incredibly painful
experience and i just want someone to
say yeah yeah this is this is painful or
someone to say yeah my sister went
through divorce yeah or even I can’t
imagine what you’re going through is
there anything I can do changes the
whole story it changes the whole story I
would argue that we function much more
as a society and the society tends to
function in a way that views us as this
one big kind of thing I wouldn’t even
say organism because really it’s just
society do you ever hear that people say
things like oh yeah well nobody likes
that like people say like it was
something okay like Justin Bieber you
ever hear people are like yeah nobody
likes Justin Bieber and I’m like well
he’s selling out so obviously somebody
likes him you don’t I mean obviously
somebody somewhere if not just a few
people okay here’s the thing a tribe
functions in this way a tribe functions
in a way that is something has affected
me and it also affects you something has
affected all of us and it’s also
affected each and every one of us and I
would say that if we could learn to say
me to just say me too when we can don’t
lie
because that’s not good but if we could
say me too in these moments that we
would have stronger greater communities
that we actually might have communities
with greater forgiveness greater loving
greater healing anybody here feel like
they could use a little bit of healing
some more grace then we can simply do
this this might be one of the keys to
greater community entering into the
suffering of others simply by trying to
say me too thank
you [Applause]